Insect Ecology: An Ecosystem Approach

Insects are the most diverse and dominant group of organisms on Earth. They are highly sensitive to environmental changes and are capable of responding dramatically by engineering further changes in ecosystem structure and function. Their capacity to respond dramatically to environmental gradients often brings them into conflict with our resource management goals. Insects are also potentially useful indicators of impending environmental changes. Insect Ecology integrates the traditional emphasis on insect diversity, life history adaptations, and species interactions with insects roles in ecosystems subject to environmental changes.

Key Features
* Integrates individual, population, community, and ecosystem levels of ecological resolution
* Illustrates the relationship of insect ecology to disturbance dynamics and environmental change
* Relates metapopulation dynamics to ecosystem structure and function
* Demonstrates the ability of insect functional groups to affect ecosystem and global processes, such as primary production, biogeochemical cycling, and carbon flux
* Provides a context for evolution as feedback between community modification of ecosystem conditions and selection of individual attributes that regulate ecosystem conditions

Timothy D. Schowalter received his Ph.D. degree in Entomology from the University of Georgia in 1979. Since 1981, he has been a professor of entomology at Oregon State University, Corvallis, studying the effects of environmental changes, including natural and anthropogenic disturbances, on arthropod communities in temperate and tropical ecosystems, and effects of herbivores and detritivores on primary production, carbon flux, biogeochemical cycling. From 1992-93, he served as Program Director for Integrative and Theoretical Ecology at the National Science Foundation, where he was involved in developing global change and terrestrial ecosystem research initiatives at the federal level. He served as a U.S. delegate to international conventions to develop collaboration between U.S. Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites and long term sites in Hungary and East Asia and the Pacific.